Banks prominent in customer complaints to financial watchdog

Only one insurer featured in the top 10 of complaints filed to the Financial Ombudsman Service

New data from the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has revealed that consumers of financial services filed 70,000 complaints to the body in the first half of 2009. Over half of the cases at 38,286 were against the five largest banking groups in the UK. For the first time, and in response to both pressure from consumer bodies and recent recommendations by Lord Hunt as part of his independent review of the body, the FOS has detailed the complaints by firm.